MJ Hyland was born in London to Irish parents in 1968. Until August 2005, she lived and worked in Australia, but she now lives in the UK, and has recently published her third novel. Her second novel, Carry Me Down, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore prize. She has also been appointed to the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester as a Lecturer in Creative Writing. Her work has been acclaimed by the likes of Ali Smith, Hilary Mantel and JM Coetzee, who commented, This is fiction writing of the highest order.
